Ahmadinejad, Part I

Quote of the day:

"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have this phenomenon. I don't know who told you that we have them" --President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when asked about the human rights abuses levied against homosexuals in Iran


Yesterday, I attended the lecture by President Ahmadinejad at Columbia University. You probably have seen or read clips from it by now because it was all over the domestic and international news yesterday and this morning. Campus was in controlled chaos all day long. There were camera crews set up outside the main gates, and throngs of protesters were there as well. Only those with Columbia ID were allowed in the gates, but once you stepped foot on the main campus, the scene wasn't much different. Rallies and protests took place throughout the day: some in support of free speech, some chastising the university for extending the invitation in the first place, some reviewing the litany of grievances against Ahmadinejad, and some managing to do all three. Although the speech wasn't scheduled until 1:30, there were students with tickets lined up as early as 10am to get in. I didn't bother to arrive until 1:00. Once I saw the mob scene outside of the auditorium, I became worried that I wasn't going to get in, but once I did get in, I saw that there was still plenty of room.

The major disappoint for the day came at the very beginning with the opening remarks of University President Lee Bollinger. His version of opening the discussion with a challenge to Ahmadinejad was simply a 25-minute tirade in which he caved to the pressure of special interest and politicians. The following insults that Bollinger lobbed at Ahmadinejad do a good job at characterizing the overall tone of his remarks:

“You exhibit all of the signs of a petty and cruel dictator”

“You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated”

“I doubt that you’ll have the intellectual courage to answer these questions”


The major disappoint of his remarks were not just the words themselves, but rather the embarrassingly un-academic nature of them, and Ahmadinejad did a very good job at calling him on it. Beyond his assertion that Bollinger’s remarks were no way to treat an invited guest, Ahmadinejd remarked that a man who purports to champion free speech cannot reasonably expect to have an open and free dialogue when he just spent nearly a half an hour spewing bias and closemindedness. Anything that Ahmadinejad said from that point on would be colored by Bollinger’s obviously biased comments.

I am very disappointed in President Bollinger. I think it’s shameful that the head of a major university would so obviously bend to the pressures of outside actors. Academia is about the search for truth. He simply can’t allow special interest, politicians, and other outsiders to divert him from this goal.

Ahmadinejad’s prepared remarks opened with a quote from the Koran, and he then went on to espouse the virtue of science and research and speak on its edifying effects on mankind for 15 minutes. It was clearly a set up for his argument for further research on the Holocaust, but the audience was not impressed. 10 minutes into it people were clearly losing interest. I saw people chatting, checking their Blackberries, and the guy next to me even started to read a newspaper.

Once we got past that point, however, things started to get more interesting.